Before England formed trading companies, established monopolies in other countries, and violently enforced them in the name of commercial gain, it was itself a victim of an aggressive and ambitious trading company whose power it struggled to contain: The Hanseatic League. The Hanse was formed as a result of German expansion along the Baltic in the C13th. A network of German-settled towns including Lübeck, Riga, Reval, & Narva began exporting Baltic (and Russian) goods to the rest of Europe, especially grain.

Really enjoying Shogun - it's well acted, great production value, and the best thing? It's also historically accurate, too. Particularly the role of the Portuguese and especially the importance of the Black Ship. I wrote about this in my book The Great Defiance. Here's a 🧵 The show is set in c1600 at the end of the Sengoku or 'warring states' era when Japan was being reunified by a new Shogun after 150 years of daimyos struggling amongst themselves to seize power. This was achieved by Tokugawa Ieyasu following death of Toyotomi Hideyoshi /2

When I was in India last week, a friend was taken aback by how visceral the largely-Indian audience's reaction was to discussions of the British Empire. Their response was emotional, pained, outraged. And this is the reality of the legacy of empire for most of the world. 1/5 They wanted to know about reparations, apologies, attempts to defend empire in the UK. Audience members had stories of how their grandparents were shot at by British soldiers; how their families lost everything in Partition; how cherished post-Independence freedom is to them. 2/5

As evidence emerges that Netanyahu's Gov has considered the forceful removal of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt, I've been thinking about another tragic episode of ethnic cleansing: that of the Kalinago people of the Caribbean in the 17th and 18th centuries. 🧵👇 /1 The Kalinago were the Indigenous people of the Lesser Antilles, a volcanic island chain comprised of around 30 small islands in the Eastern Caribbean, from Saint Kitts in the North all the way to Trinidad and Tobago in the south. As their home sat at the exact point ships.../2

Was gutted to discover two historians - both Jewish - unfollowed me over the past week or so. I like to think I constantly check my privilege here especially when challenged on race, gender, & anything else. I’m not a proud person and will happily listen, reflect, & grow. /1 When I realised they had unfollowed me, I went back through my tweets since the terrible Hamas attack on 7 October. Now those who follow me know I have been outspoken in my support for the Palestinian people & the tragic and genocidal assault unfolding on Gaza before our eyes./2

I must admit, despite being a scholar of anti-colonial resistance, I'm struggling to reconcile my support for Palestine's liberation with the gruesome images of Israeli civilians being kidnapped and killed by Hamas. No matter who perpetuates violence against innocents /1 it must always be condemned. If you've justly condemned the countless acts of violence committed by Israeli settlers and authorities against innocent Palestinians, there's no reason for you not to condemn the parading of Israeli bodies around Gazan streets. /2

Superb work, especially by Ghanaian archeologists. Forts were key components of formal and organised European regimes of the trade in enslaved people. But it's also important to recognise that Anglo-British participation had a much longer history /1
bbc.co.uk/news/world-afr… Even before Fort Kormantine (above) was built in 1630s, English captains and merchants had trafficked thousands of ppl from West & Central Africa across the Atlantic. Most were sold to Iberian colonies in Greater Antilles & South America. Many were captured from Iberian ships /2

What did three chests of Italian pasta and an Ashanti drinking cup made out of the skull of a British general have in common? The defeat of the British Empire in West Africa, of course. Not familiar? Here's a short 🧵/1 In West Africa, the Ashanti had been expanding out from Kumasi in all directions since the late C17th. By the later C18th century, the Ashanti had emerged as the dominant polity in the region and began to consolidate its control over the Atlantic Coast./2

One of the key aims of my book is to challenge teleological narratives of the British Empire: yes, ultimately by the C19th, it managed to become hegemonic in many of the regions that had been a focus of its interests. But, if we write its history from that perspective.../1 ...we strip those who encountered the British Empire of their agency and reduce them to passive and inevitable victims of colonialism. That was never the case in the early modern period, and that was certainly never the case once they became colonised by the modern period. /2

Empire apologists excuse away colonialism by arguing that we can’t judge the past by modern values - never mind that ppl have always condemned murder, slavery, and war. In fact there were plenty of contemporaries that did condemn colonialism then. /1 In Virginia in 1620, as a growing English colonial population waged war against the Indigenous Powhatans, displaced them from their land, and converted their children to Christianity, the chaplain George Thorpe confessed that they were doing wrong. He admitted that…/2

‘WhAt AbOuT tHe ArAb SlAvE tRaDeRs?!’ is another trope often deployed by those wishing to deflect from Europe’s role in the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans, hoping to prioritise a narrative of European victimhood.

Let’s put this one under the microscope, shall we? 🧵 In the 250 yrs between 1530 to 1780, more than 1 million people fell victim to the corso slave trade. The corso was the maritime raiding war between Christian and Muslim powers that emerged in response to Ottoman expansion across the Mediterranean in this period. 1/

I see ‘well the English and Irish were also slaves in the Caribbean’ discourse has reared its head. Often trotted out as rebuttal to the horrors of the transatlantic trade in enslaved people from Africa in order to promote a false white victimhood, let’s demolish this myth: 🧵1/ Ireland was the first overseas English colony, and became the laboratory for the formation of colonial strategies of violence and atrocity against colonised people that would be deployed elsewhere in its nascent empire in the C16th & C17th 2/

'BuT wHaT aBoUt ThE aFriCaN sLaVeRs?!' - is the immediate response of those uneducated on the transatlantic trade in enslaved people from Africa (see, also: racists & imperial apologists). So let's do a bit of an examination on the relationship between Britain and Africans🧵 1/ When we want to discuss Britain's role, we are predominantly talking about West Africa & so-called 'Slave Coast'', 250 mile stretch of coast along the Bight of Benin. Here, peoples like the Fon and states like Allada, Ouida, Benin, & Dahomey engaged in international trade. 2/

English sailors in Bengal after drinking Bhang, a cannabis-infused drink, in 1675: 'It soon took its operation upon most of us… One of them sat himself down upon the floor and wept bitterly all afternoon; the other, terrified with fear, did put his head into a great jar 1/2 ...and continued in that posture for four hours or more…four or five lay upon the carpets highly complimenting each other in high terms…One was quarrelsome and fought with one of the wooden pillars of the porch until he had little skin upon the knuckles of the fingers.'